The Best and Worst Times to Drive Over the Christmas Holiday
Christmas is a time for family togetherness, holiday cheer, and the agony of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way to dinner with relatives. If you're traveling around Christmas, you're basically guaranteed to deal with some traffic headaches, but if you stick to off-peak times, you can avoid some misery.
The traffic-tracking app Waze has released data about the most and least crowded days of the week of Christmas. The worst possible times to drive are Wednesday between 3 and 6 p.m., right around when people leave work. Thursday, Christmas Eve, is also a rough day, starting at noon and getting worse and worse as the day goes on. If you want to have a hassle-free drive, take the trip on Friday, Christmas Day itself. The app's data shows below-average traffic throughout the whole day.
And if you're looking for a safe, easy trip home after visiting family, skip Sunday. The Sunday after Christmas is often the worst day for drivers, with an 87.7% increase in traffic jams, plus upticks in accidents, hazards, and speed traps. Instead, stay an extra day and leave early Monday morning. The traffic gets worse again after noon.
Time reports that more than 100 million Americans will travel between December 23 and January 3, so you're going to be stuck in a little bit of traffic no matter what. So hopefully you'll be filled with enough Christmas cheer that it will prevent any road rage.
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